Monthly Archives: July 2007

The whole thing starts with the cachet, the coolness surrounding the Cuban revolution. At the time, the United States was the biggest fuddy-duddy, Leave-it-to-Beaver country in the world. Then, all of a sudden, you had these long-haired revolutionaries down in Cuba – they were the first hippies, the first beatniks. Look at Che Guevara in those years. Take off the beard and you’ve got Jim Morrison. Raul Castro used to carry his shoulder-length blond hair in a ponytail. Camilo Cienfuegos looked like another Jerry Garcia. There was that coolness cachet, plus all the misconceptions about what Cuba was like prior to these guys. […]

Che Guevara’s diaries. Those are the same diaries that he kept as a young man when he was traveling in South America. They were published in Havana. It’s very interesting because Robert Redford chose to omit many fascinating items. For instance, in those diaries – the original ones – Che Guevara has a passage where he says, “crazy with fury, I will murder any enemy that falls into my hands. My nostrils dilate while savoring the sweet odor of blood and gunpowder.” Naturally, for some reason, that was left out of Redford’s heart-warming movie.

All you have to do is take Che Guevara’s writing and put it alongside that of [Seung-hui] Cho, the Virginia Tech killer, and you can’t tell the difference. Cho comes across as healthy compared to Che Guevara. Yet I haven’t seen too many Cho t-shirts around, while there are lots of Che t-shirts. […]

It has dawned on me that what I have written is actually an inspirational book and that what I give are inspirational talks. Because if Che Guevara – a coward, a sadist, an imbecile – can see his picture become the most widely reproduced picture of the century, then folks, there’s hope for all of us. It is astounding that a man who was so completely worthless should become so idolized. And that only happened because he hooked up with Fidel Castro, the most effective propagandist in modern history, and he’s still at it.

Fontova has a lot more to say about Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, the first Stalinist hippies of the sixties, in two parts: Part 1; Part 2.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in my view the most extravagantly qualified Supreme Court nominee in my lifetime, had a “benign idiopathic seizure” today. He’s fine, but might be placed on anti-seizure medication since he also had one in 1993. This is how the prominent liberal web site Wonkette covered the news:

Chief Justice John Roberts has died in his summer home in Maine. No, not really, but we know you have your fingers crossed.

Gonzales testified that he had visited John Ashcroft in the hospital to try to resolve a legal dispute that had developed over an intelligence program, but that the program in question was not the “terrorist surveillance program” that had been confirmed by President Bush, i.e., the interception of international communications where one participant is associated with al Qaeda. About that program, Gonzales said there had been no serious legal question.

This testimony was met with incredulity by the Senators. “Do you expect us to believe that?” Arlen Spector asked. Committee members Schumer and Leahy flatly accused Gonzales of lying, and called for a special prosecutor to carry out a perjury investigation. One thing I could never understand was why anyone cares: what difference would it make if Gonzales’s hospital visit related to the “terrorist surveillance program,” or to some other intelligence activity? And what reason would Gonzales have to lie about that fact?

Today the Times confirms that Gonzales told the truth. The legal dispute that broke out in 2004 was about the NSA’s “data mining” project, in which databases of telephone records were reviewed for patterns suggestive of terrorist cells

If the dispute chiefly involved data mining, rather than eavesdropping, Mr. Gonzales’ defenders may maintain that his narrowly crafted answers, while legalistic, were technically correct.

First, this paragraph of “analysis” is contradicted by the reporting contained in the same article, which doesn’t say that the dispute was “chiefly” about data mining. It says it was about data mining, period. Further, there is nothing “narrowly crafted,” “legalistic” or “technically correct” about Gonzales’s testimony. It was truthful and fully accurate. He said that the legal controversy did not involve the program that was confirmed by President Bush, in which international communications where one party was associated with al Qaeda were intercepted. That is exactly what the Times reported today. The controversy involved a completely different program, which has been rumored but which the administration has never publicly confirmed. Yet the Times cannot bring itself to admit that Gonzales has been vindicated, and the Senators who called for a perjury investigation have been made to look foolish.

The Senators who accused Gonzales of perjury are proved to be grandstanding fools who need to reign in their hubris and apologize. So too does the New York Times.

It all leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Politics has always been a contact sport. When did the rough-and-tumble lead newspapers to lie and mislead in blatant disregard for the truth, pundits to cross their fingers that those who disagreed with them would die suddenly, and Senators to throw baseless accusations and cries for unconstitutional special prosecutors for criminal behavior around like confetti at a welcome back hero parade?

And why don’t we ever see any of those? Do the left, who rule bureaucratic New York City and the other big cities, really support the troops when they return from theatre?

The door swung shut and two desk spooks sat down at the conference table. They glared at me with inscrutable expressions. One was her boss. He looked like a low level spook boss. The other was just another desk spook. Neither one had as good hair as mine.

Her boss said, “So you’re Valiant’s husband.”

“Yeah, I’m a lucky man, maaaaan,” I replied suavely.

She gave me one of those dreamy looks that convinced me to marry her in the first place. She’s such a foxalicious fox of the foxy tribe of foxes. She added, “and an ex-ambassador with experience in Niger.”

“I guess you know what we need. Right, Joe?” he asked.

“We need to find out if Saddam bought any Uranium in Niger.” I responded. “I heard Darth and Der Fuhrer are trying to lay a frame-job on him.”

“Yeah those dillweeds,” he said. “They think we aren’t doing our jobs, and we have to cover our asses or we’ll have to go back into covert work. And I like coming to work at Langley everyday.”

“Me too,” agreed the other spook.

I wrote DILLWEEDS in my notebook.

“Me three,” said Princess Valiant.

“Me four,” said the boss spook. He snorted with laughter.

I laughed. And they laughed. We all laughed. Man we laughed, slapping our knees, bumping foreheads on the table, crying tears of bemused amusement. I laughed, leaning back in my chair until I lost balance and fell backwards on the floor.

“Hoooo haw, tee hee hee hee,” I snurfled. The howling in the room was probably loud enough to wake the dead or even a working class person sitting down the hall and doing whatever the little people do all day when they’re at their jobs.

“No thanks, Florida,” the boss spook blurted. The he started laughing again. She closed the door and tiptoed away.

We exploded in new gales of guffaws, hurricanes of hilarity, cyclones of silliness, until the tittering grew tiresome.

I wrote ME FOUR in my notebook. I put a smiley face next to it.

“It shouldn’t be too hard, Ambassador,” boss spook said. “There are only two exports from Niger. One is yellowcake Uranium. The other is goat urine. All you have to do is find out if Saddam’s guys were looking. And we don’t care about goat urine.”

“No goat urine.” I replied. “No goat urine.” I wrote NO GOAT URINE in my notebook.

He raised an eyebrow. “Keep it under your hat, Ambassador,” he said. “I hope your wife is right about you, O’Hair.

“I ran my fingers through my hair, then shook my head to let it settle down into luxuriously hirsute perfection. “I’ll do right by you and The Company,” I mimed quotation marks with my fingers when I said The Company.

He stared at me.

“What kind of gun do I get?” I asked. “Do I get a code number like James Bond?”

He stared.

I winked and nodded. “Never mind. Joking.” Like I thought, the conference room was bugged. The gun was going to be in the diplomatic packet. Probably a nickle-plated Beretta M1 9mm. That’s what all the spies use when they go out into the field against the international forces of the corrupt capitalist empire. No blood for oil!

“I’m doing this because I trust Valiant,” he said. “Do right by her.”

“10-4 Roger Wilco,” I grinned.

He stood up and walked out the door without so much as a by-your-leave. Spook junior followed him nervously.

Valiant grimaced and wiped her brow with the back of her hand. “Whew! I’m glad that’s over.”

“What a dillweed,” I smirked. I stood and smoothed my hair as I looked at my reflection in a painting on the wall. “You knocked it out of the park, you handsome devil! How does my hair look, Valiant?”

“Even better than John Edwards,” she cooed. Then she turned me around and pressed against me like a long drink of cool blonde water.

I’m a lucky man.

Editorial Note: “Joe O’Hair” and “Princess Valiant” are pseudonyms. The author has requested the use of a pseudonym to avoid repercussions and recriminations from the Nazi Chimp Rethuglicans who stole the Amerikkkan elections in 2000 and 2004.

Robert Woo, an oral surgeon in Washington state implanted fake boar tusks in his assistant Tina Alberts’ mouth during the midst of implant surgery in which she was given general anesthesia. He took photos of her with boar tusks, even propping her eyelids open for some photos. Then he finished the surgery, putting the correct implants in. He didn’t give her copies of the photos, but copies circulated in the office. Then, at her office birthday party, her coworkers gave the Ms. Alberts copies of the photos. Humiliated, she quit and sued. Fireman’s Fund, his insurance company, refused to cover him as the boar tusks and photos were not a covered procedure. She got $250 thousand in an out-of-court settlement. Then Woo sued his insurance company and won the amount of the settlement plus penalties of $750 thousand for a total of a million simoleons. Insurance company appealed and prevailed in the state Court of Appeals. He appealed the appeal and prevailed in the state Supreme Court. (see here, here and here)

And that’s where it stands now.

This sadistic clown played a cruel practical joke on a patient who was also an employee and got sued. This amounted to intentional malpractice, and probably harassment as well. His insurance company didn’t cover him, because quite rightly intentional malpractice is not the kind of thing that insurance companies cover. If he shot her with a gun or murdered her with an overdose of anesthetic would the insurance company cover him in a lawsuit?

Now the Washington State Supreme Court has rewarded him with a million dollars for committing intentional malpractice and getting sued for it. Who pays for his million dollar payout for committing intentional malpractice? Who pays for the court costs in three separate trials? Who pays when the Judiciary gets it so obviously wrong?

The dispute between the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the State Department in Washington has been simmering since late last year.

At one point, the U.S. Embassy refused to allow a State Department official from Washington, James Golden, managing director of the Emergency Projects Coordinating Office, permission to enter the country for the embassy project by denying normally standard “country clearance.”

What’s the reason for this dispute?

It seems that the US State Department bought a site for $22 million a couple of years ago and wants to build a new embassy there. If you think back to 1983, while Reagan was in his first term, the civil war in Lebanon was hot. Iran-allied HizbAllah had a cottage industry of kidnapping Americans for ransom. In 1983, a HizbAllah assassin bombed the US Marines barracks in Beirut, murdering 241 US Marines and leading Reagan to withdraw US forces from the peacekeeping mission there. Also in 1983 and 1984, the old embassy had been hit by HizbAllah in two separate bombing attacks that killed 87 people including eight CIA employees.

I understand why State would want to replace the old embassy. The old embassy was susceptible to bombings as proved multiple times. And it had been bombed, which tends to cause structural damage. Best to get a new embassy building. That’s the sensible thing to do. But sensible people don’t choose to build embassies a few hundred yards from the headquarters of a proven enemy and gang of assassins like Iranian catspaw HizbAllah.

“It boggles the mind,” says former State Department security official Tony Diebler. “Any reasonable person that looks at that site, does their homework and sees who controls the area would determine that it’s a foolish, dangerous idea to build the embassy there,” Diebler said.

State seems to be the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Leaks, failures of diplomacy, incompetent choices of allies in Islamic countries, and now plans to build a henhouse in the foxes’ neighborhood.

The good news at the end of this is that the plans are on hold.

plans for a controversial new U.S. Embassy in Beirut have been put on hold indefinitely, and effectively killed

Cross your fingers that it remains a dead plan.

It makes you wonder though if there was an overarching plan behind this. Was this kerfuffle planned all along? The notoriously conspiracy minded HizbAllah assassins are likely to think so. This development will probably drive them crazy wondering what the real US plan is.

The Eurabia project is well underway. Mark Steyn predicts that Europe will be under the jackboot of Islamic law by the end of the 21st century we are now in. That means the Mona Lisa will be destroyed or painted over with a burka. The Vatican will be besieged and overrun. The great churches will be burned down or converted into mosques, their altars desecrated and the stained glass bricked up, the pews hacked up and converted into firewood, the stone floors carpeted over. Exhortations to Jihad and the killing of Infidels will blare from every mosque. The Christians and Jews of Europe will live in fear. The atheists, homosexuals, decadent artists and intellectuals of Europe will convert to Jihadist Islam like Cat Stevens or be killed like Theo Van Gogh.

Given the Muslim outrage the last time the Pontiff said something substantive about the history of Islam and the West, it has fallen to his secretary to make public observations about what is going on:

Pope Benedict XVI’s private secretary warned of the Islamisation of Europe and stressed the need for the continent’s Christian roots not to be ignored.

“Attempts to Islamise the west cannot be denied,” Monsignor Georg Gaenswein was quoted as saying in the weekly Sueddeutsche Magazin to be published Friday.

“The danger for the identity of Europe that is connected with it should not be ignored out of a wrongly understood respectfulness,” the magazine quoted him as saying.

As Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale:

Mordre wol out, that se we day by day.

–The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, l. 232

While the murder of the West in Europe is not complete, it is planned. And it is obvious, and day by day becoming more so even to those who squeeze their eyes shut. If we watch we will see the knives plunge into its breast pinning Jihadist threats again and again, every day. If we refuse easy, shallow pacifism and take action, we may yet be able to save the West, even Europe.

It is good to know that the Vatican is awake. It is still the soul of Europe, and can still be its salvation.

This blog is a remarkably clear-eyed, gracious, and courageous look at the very end of ordinary human lives from the viewpoint of the men who come to pick up the pieces.

When I read an extract from this blog on The Belmont Club, my eyes grew misty and I thought intellectually about the end of life and what it means. When I clicked through and read the whole entry I teared up, then wept, then sobbed. And then I laughed, but not in relief. It didn’t let up. The cycle continued. What I did may be cliched, but it is not false. That is what amazingly talented storytellers and writers do with their words when they tell the right story. The characters in these autobiographical short-short-stories have first names, or they have titles like Pardner, Part-Time Temporary Partner, Trooper, and the girl with the prom dress. But they are no less real, no less true, for that. The writer, who calls himself Ambulance Driver, is so technically proficient, his style so natural and unaffected, and he is so sure of his subject matter that the reader is immediately drawn into the stories, even the short ones. He is ready to be widely published in hardback and I expect his books to be best-sellers.

Read the comments. The Ambulance Driver’s stories are so good, so powerful, that the comments draw personal stories out of readers of his site of the ends of other lives, their relatives, friends, some strangers. Some of the comments are as powerful and affecting as the stories they respond to.

I added him to my blogroll under Moral Clarity. I expect many others will add him to theirs as well.